"If everyone is guaranteed employment, what incentive do they have to actually work."

Social prestige and social pressure. Also there's this crazy idea that people work because it fulfills them and they get some enjoyment out of it. They want to challenge themselves to be the best they can at it. They aren't just working to survive.

What incentive is there for rich people who inherit wealth to work?

In such a world, there would still be scientists and public employees. If robots one day are able to do everything, I would indeed support socialism, but that day will not come without capitalist innovation.

"Who are you to say that the government knows better than investors where money should go?"

Common sense. Why haven't investors made fuel efficient cars despite the urgent need for them? Why haven't they invested in renewable energies? Why is American transportation and education infrastructure in tatters? Because investors don't invest in what is needed they invest in where they can make a profit with minimal effort.

"A government-controlled economy would lack innovation"

Which is why most of our best innovations has come from the public sector like the military, right?

Putin, there are those who don't care about social prestige and pressure and don't want to challenge themselves, and it would be unfair for those who do. You seem to live in some lala land of sorts. There are some jobs that you just can't "get enjoyment" out of such as mining. What enjoyment would you have sweating in an underground cavern digging up dirt? But we still need people to work those jobs, and that is where the capitalist system comes in.

Rich people don't need to work. Their parents have already created more wealth than the average person ever will.

The private sector has made fuel efficient cars, and they have invested in renewable energies. The public just won't buy them because they're still too expensive. With more private investment, they will eventually become cheaper. Transportation and education are government sectors, and the fact that they're in tatters just proves my point.

The military does not operate under a socialist structure. Accomplishments are rewarded with rank and consequent raise in income.

"You seem to live in some lala land of sorts."

Sure, buddy. Rich people always earn what they get. They always get punished for their crimes. Slavery has nothing to do with imperialism. Destroying any wage floor would eliminate slavery. If I live in lalaland I wonder what alternative reality you live in?

"What enjoyment would you have sweating in an underground cavern digging up dirt?"

Enjoying physical labor does seem like an oddity to white collar free market ideologues whose idea of "work" is shutting down facebook when the boss comes looking over your shoulder. Have you ever been to West Virginia? Plenty of people take great pride in being coal miners. Mining towns have their own unique subculture and way of life.

You have such a dreary view of the world that everybody has to be alienated from what they do and the only enjoyment anybody could possibly get from labor is from the bare bones monetary crumbs you throw them.

"Their parents have already created more wealth than the average person ever will."

So they just hoard the money? How does an economy function if they don't even invest their wealth in anything? What incentive is there for them to do that properly?

If everyone got to choose what they wanted to be, I assure you the vast majority would not choose a blue collar job. A minority might but not nearly enough.

You won't get them investing by taxing their investments.

"The private sector has made fuel efficient cars"

Lalaland indeed. We've had the capability for fuel efficient cars for years and the auto industry notoriously dragged its feet on investing and producing them. Only by government coercion and regulation have we made any progress on this. It's embarrassing. Cities are unlivable because of the pollution from automobiles.

"and they have invested in renewable energies"

Really what's the investment in renewables compared to the investment in fossil fuels? Why does the government have to prod and incentivize such investments in order for anything to happen?

"The public just won't buy them because they're still too expensive. With more private investment, they will eventually become cheaper"

Demonstrating the slowness and inefficiency of the market. We have to sit here and wait for decades while urgent needs are not met and our cities become too polluted to breath.

"Transportation and education are government sectors, and the fact that they're in tatters just proves my point."

Not really. They're in tatters because the government doesn't have the resources to invest in them because they keep slashing social services in order to attract capital. The private sector could easily invest in transportation but they don't want to because the risk is too high for them when they could make easy money elsewhere. Education is run by state governments dependent on revenue from the feds. And furthermore education has been progressively privatized which has only made it 100x worse as school standards have slackened when they're not being shut down completely.

if blue collar workers were paid well, got decent vacation time, and had a viable path forward in life, many many would choose this life. it is also incredibly possible if we got back to valuing actual things, objects and services, rather then tweaked ledger sheets and financial "packages." think about all of this high paying white collar jobs out there....most of them operate selling basically nothing of actual real world value.

Back when coal mining paid well in the 60s/70s, people looked down at those who wanted to go to college, as if they hated their heritage and their home.

I do believe in environmental regulations because I believe in fairness. The animals and plants that suffer from global warming and deforestation are unable to defend themselves, and the government must step in to defend them. Even so, the public is able to force auto companies to build fuel efficient cars by boycotting companies that don't. If the public does not doe so, if means that it doesn't care.

The government would have money to invest in transportation and education if it reduced spending on welfare, medicare, and military. Education has not become privatized, and I don't know where you're getting that information from. In fact, the idea of a public high school is quite a recent idea.

ishirkmywork, blue collar workers are no well-paid because companies today don't need them. If you want a high pay, you need to stand out by possessing a skill other than your hands, which everyone has. As for the packages having no value, no one would buy them if they had no value. It is the consumer's fault if he or she buys something that has no value.

no value in the sense of not contributing anything to the world. they have financial value of course, but financial value is a made up thing.

The answer, my friend, is 42.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-09/will-the-tesla-model-3-really-sell-for-25-000

How an electric vehicle's price point is determined in order to get sales. It's not enough to have a great product because over a certain price there aren't enough buyers willing to buy on the product's merit. While you have the early adopters that will buy to be first and those that will buy because it's expensive. Economists have shown that for mass sales the product has to be in a certain price range to sell.

The Chevy Bolt electric vehicle will be in the same price range.

ishirkmywork, if there is a demand, then it has value.

"Demonstrating the slowness and inefficiency of the market. We have to sit here and wait for decades while urgent needs are not met and our cities become too polluted to breath. "

Slow compared to command economies?

Why is that China only started to grow economically once it started introduce market reforms.
Or contrast West Germany with East Germany or South Korea with North Korea?

Did the USSR have a better environmental record than western Europe? Did demonstrate an ability to develop technology faster than the west.

The answer is clearly no. Moreover the reasons are well understood. Two key reasons come to mind. The problem of information and the problem of incentives.

Whatever problems capitalism has compared to a command economy, speed of development is not one of them.

Besides no economy is completely market driven. It is still possible for governments to lead the way where the private sector is unable.

What spyman said is absolutely correct. China would still be an agricultural nation of little global significance if not for the privatization of economy under Deng. Moreover, its poor population decreased as well, not the common liberal narrative of the rich getting richer. China also happens to have less welfare than the US.

Also, look a Space X. Space X is coming up with new innovations all the time, while NASA has stalled.

Uh, how exactly has NASA stalled when SpaceX couldn't exist without them? Elon Musk is a great innovator, but everything he does is thanks to government handouts, not free markets.

SpaceX has contracts with NASA, but it isn't funded by NASA. It is privately funded and was founded by former PayPal entrepreneur and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk.

I wouldn't argue that we should do away with NASA. There is definitely an important place for government funded research. But when it comes to developing commercial applications based on cutting edge research then the private sector has an important role to play. If we cut the private sector out altogether as happens in a purely command economy we're will have less technological development. People of vision rarely thrive in a bureaucracy.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-12/did-elon-musk-build-that-

Dragon is funded by NASA, Dragon V2 (crew) is funded by NASA, all of the launches of the original Falcon 9 v1.0 bar the initial test flight were funded by NASA. Not to mention the decades of public investment in aerospace that SpaceX drew upon. To say SpaceX has a few contracts with NASA is to vastly understate the way the two depend upon each other like links in a chain.

But ultimately NASA is just paying SpaceX to send things to the ISS. SpaceX still operates competitively and seeks to make profits. It just so happens that NASA is the largest source for profit. If NASA were able to create better spaceships of its own, it wouldn't sign these contracts with SpaceX.

Also SpaceX was started initially with private funding. After it showed promise it then gained funding from NASA. According to Wikipedia about half of SpaceX's funding is from private investors, with the other half coming from NASA.

"Why is that China only started to grow economically once it started introduce market reforms."

First this is false. China grew rapidly in the first years after the revolution, particularly in the industrial sector. It also grew rapidly under the management of Liu Shaoqi. The reason why growth rates have been high since 'market reforms' is because the western capitalist world decided to massively relocate its factories to exploit its large pool of labor. The growth was only possible because of the land reforms and other restructuring that had taken place prior to the Deng reforms, namely the breaking up of large estates. Countries that haven't undertaken such (socialist) land reforms have found growth under market conditions extremely difficult. Plus you ignore in this and other cases the fact that China began its status as a command economy under very poor conditions. They had just fought a brutal war and were already a very poor country. China's rapid rise from the ashes of civil war to an industrialized country is a testament to the speed of command economy development. Ditto the Soviet Union, the speed of industrialization cannot be denied in that case. Decades of sustained rapid economic growth. I notice you don't even bother to mention that case.

"Or contrast West Germany with East Germany or South Korea with North Korea?"

Apples and oranges comparisons. West Germany was flooded with money via the Marshall Plan. The USSR was caught off guard by the artificial division of Germany and the re-industrialization of West Germany because it violated the post-war agreements that had been made. The USSR carted off a lot of East Germany's industrial production as a consequence of reparations for WWII, which the West did not inflict on their zone as they had originally agreed.

North Korea was carpet bombed to oblivion during the Korean war. Tons and tons of bombs were dropped on that country, more than on Japan. To compare the conditions of North and South Korea is just plain absurd. I notice you don't bother to compare developing countries with comparable conditions. How exactly has Pakistan done under neoliberal economic policies since 1947? Contrast Pakistan with India, who largely had socialist policies for its first decades of development. How about the conditions of Cuba and the surrounding island countries? There's no comparison, Cuba is far and away better on all HDI indicators. Vietnam is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and its economic measures have largely expanded and retained the state's control of the economy. The IMF has imposed neoliberal policies on much of the developing world, what have been the results? By and large they've been disastrous. But you want to compared industrialized western countries to poor ones and claim that this shows the 'speed' of development under capitalism.

"Did the USSR have a better environmental record than western Europe? "

Absurd question. The USSR was far behind western Europe when it became the USSR. Western Europe had had a century of industrialization. The USSR was trying to develop its means of production so it could be an industrial nation. Compare USSR's environmental record in its first centuries with western Europe's environmental record in the early-mid 18th century. That's a better comparison.

"The problem of information and the problem of incentives."

No the problem you neglect to mention is uneven development. You're comparing things that aren't remotely the same. Cuba's environmental record is a hell of a lot better than the rest of Latin America, I might add. Environmental consciousness is a fairly recent phenomena worldwide.

Sorry meant to say early mid 19th century.

"Whatever problems capitalism has compared to a command economy, speed of development is not one of them."

There is a reason why leaders of developing countries had to be largely coerced by IMF restructuring in order to undertake market oriented policies, because the policies that led to industrialization where it had occurred in the developing world largely followed the pattern of large-scale nationalization of industries, economic planning, and import substitution. There are few examples of countries who thought they could rapidly grow via free markets.

Socialist, communist, and command economies are such wonderful things to live under, people have fled from them the first chance they get. All three are inherently immoral because they can only be implemented across all sectors by the use of force or threat of force.

The ultimate power of the 'voter' - the use of one's feet.